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The Spectacle Blog
Amazon.com has been targeted by state legislatures across the country as a source of potential tax revenue, and there’s now a lawsuit in Indiana being filed by brick-and-mortar retailers against the state because they have chosen not to go this route.
Shopping mall giant Simon Property Group sued the Indiana Department of Revenue on Thursday to try to force it to collect taxes from Amazon.com Inc. for all sales made in the state.
Online retailers are not required to pay sales taxes to state legislatures if they do not own and operate physical stores. Amazon does have affiliate distribution centers in Indiana, and those relationships could be jeopardized with a ruling in Simon Property’s favor. The online retailer has cut ties with centers in Colorado, Alabama, North Carolina, Connecticut, Rhode Island and neighboring Illinois as a result of attempts to collect taxes in this manner.
Indianan Republican legislator Luke Kenley was quoted as estimating that Indiana stood to make $400 million in tax revenue every year if the state collected taxes from Amazon. What would actually happen, as happened in Illinois, is that Amazon would cut ties with their distribution centers in the state, Indiana will lose jobs and would not see a cent in increased revenue.
TheStreet.com has a good roundup of the nationwide state-based internet tax fight.
View all comments (10) | Leave a comment
More Blog Posts by Kevin Glass
http://spectator.org/blog/2011/11/05/brick-and-mortar-retailers-tak
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Occam's Tool| 11.5.11 @ 10:42AM
What legislators need to remember is that Capital can flee to where it is appreciated. Just moronic, as Indiana can be fromtime to time (the home of the largest chapter of the KKK in the 1920s, for example).
CalMark| 11.5.11 @ 2:20PM
The legislators doing this are tyrants, every last one, regardless of the letter next to their name.
They should be trying to find a way to increase productivity. Instead, they're looking for new ways to fleece people.
We need a complete, top-to-bottom housecleaning.
P.S. Since when do judges have the right to order legislatures (that's what's implied here) to do stuff? Except in MA for gay marriage, of course.
C Bowen | 11.6.11 @ 5:03PM
I thought you supported Cain's national sales tax?
I am confused.
aware| 11.5.11 @ 4:42PM
Add this: Mike Enzi of Wyoming and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee are about to take away sales tax exemption on internet sales at the behest of their owners WalMart, Home Depot, Best Buy, and other cronies.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-3192.....les-taxes/
Note these 2 are some of our Republican saviors. But just keep thinking Republicans running things will make everything better. The rage builds...
Quartermaster| 11.5.11 @ 6:27PM
Taxes are not the problem with Amazon. I've actually paid about the same from Amazon as I would if I could have gotten the same thing locally. When all was said and done, shipping made it a wash.
The brick and mortar crony capitalists are just doing what they have always done. Using the government to create barriers in the market, or denying the market to competitors.
The Republicans have always been the party of crony capitalism. They started as leftists and leftists they remain.
johninflorida| 11.6.11 @ 7:25AM
aware & Quartermaster ...
as you both say, Republicans are not the answer, Republicans are HALF of the problem.
Conservative representatives are the only salvation, whatever (letter) is written behind their names.
The design was ALWAYS ... Feds work FOR States & States work FOR People. Until the Political Class ReLearns this lesson, we'll just have to keep booting their butts to the curb.
"The rage builds..." YOU BETCHA!!
aware| 11.7.11 @ 6:16AM
john, as a former arch conservative, I think we should evaluate what good "conservatism" has actually done up to this point. Clearly it has not reduced government or "restored" constitutionalism. This could be forgiven if conservatives never had power but they have. And when they have we got bigger government. That is the fact.
After 30 years of beating this dead horse I'm done with Buckleyism. My conclusion is that conservatism is either full of utter incompetents or else is a fraud. For over 50 years it has proved unable to even stem the tide of the Leviathan State.
Even now "conservatives" are lining up behind either a former governor who instituted his own Obamacare, or one who doubled Texas spending and debt, or a former Federal Reserve chairman who wants to give us a national sales tax WITH an income tax, or a former speaker with a propensity to buddy up with worst statists of the left and was easily run out of town. Does this give you confidence?
I think too many accept the whole false left/right dichotomy and become caught up in the "team spirit" of a horse race. It isn't about right vs left, it is about the State vs the individual. Conservatives who win are nothing more than night watchmen guarding the Welfare State until the day shift clocks in.
We are in the deepest trouble we've ever been in and disaster is staring us in the face. If the conservative movement has not kept us from getting to this point what makes you think it can reverse the plunge into the ash heap of history?
Quartermaster| 11.7.11 @ 6:08PM
It won't, aware. No one has ever been to the point we are out and backed away. They all went over the cliff.
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silikatinės plytos | 4.30.12 @ 2:46PM
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In regards of the amazon you are right guys, i also would think that feds for for states & states work for people. Anyways good luck to you